More than half of Boulder County's active voters have already cast their ballots in the 2012 general election.

By Friday night, 112,329 voters -- nearly 60 percent of the total active voters on the county's rolls -- had completed their ballots, according to Brad Turner, a spokesman for the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder's Office.

Turner said records show that in the 2008 presidential election, 112,604 Boulder County voters had completed voting by the Friday night before that year's Election Day. That represented about 60.5 percent of the total active voters.

This year's tally includes 94,356 mail ballots the county had gotten back from Boulder County voters, as well as 17,973 people who cast ballots in person at early-voting polling places.

In 2008, Boulder County had received 85,569 completed mail ballots by the Friday night before that year's general election, and 27,035 people had voted at early-voting polling sites.

Notwithstanding their political rivalries, the candidates crisscrossing Colorado in the closing days of their election campaigns are unified on at least one common theme:

Your vote is important. But you can't help the cause if you don't cast your ballot.

More than 1.6 million Coloradans already had heeded that plea by Saturday morning, either by filling out and returning mail ballots or by voting in person at one of the early-voting polling places that Colorado's counties provided between Oct. 22 and Friday, according to tallies from the Secretary of State's Office.

The Boulder County Clerk and Recorder's Office reported that by Friday night, voters had returned 94,356 completed mail ballots. Another 17,973 voters cast ballots at the early-voting sites Boulder County operated.

In Weld County, 72,428 voters had returned their mail ballots or had early-voted in person, according to the Secretary of State's Office.

From left: John Bigger, 4th Congressional District candidate Brandon Shaffer and Richard Juday talk during a fundraiser Thursday at the Bigger residence in Longmont. The race for the U.S. House of representatives between Shaffer and incumbent Cory Gardner has drawn strong interest in the Boulder County portion of the district.
(
Matthew Jonas
)

Secretary of State Scott Gessler said Saturday that time is running out for voters using the mail-ballot option in this year's election -- as many as 700,000 such voters, his staff said -- to get those ballots back to their county clerks. The ballots have to be in the clerk's possession by 7 p.m. Tuesday. Officials advise that it's too late for voters to send their ballots back by mail.

On Monday or Tuesday, though, voters can still hand-deliver their completed mail ballots to drop-off locations designated by their county clerks.

Coloradans who didn't request mail ballots -- and people who didn't vote at one of their county's designated early-voting polling sites -- must cast their ballots in person, on Election Day itself, when the polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Boulder County will be staffing 118 polling places on Election Day, serving the county's 234 election precincts. Voters will have to cast their ballots at the polling place the county has assigned to those voters' home precinct.

Boulder County sent postcards to voters in late September telling them where their designated Election Day polling place would be, but anyone who's lost or misplaced that information can look it up online at BoulderCountyVotes.org, or can call the county clerk's election division at 303-413-7740.

Weld County voters aren't required to show up at a specific polling location. Their county uses a "vote center" system, and any Weld voter can cast a ballot at any of the 33 centers.

Former Longmont mayor Leona Stoecker, center, introduces Robert Bergstrom, left, president of St. Vrain Manufacturing Inc., and U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner before a tour of the facility in Longmont on Thursday. The race for the 4th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives between Gardner and state Sen. Brandon Shaffer has drawn strong interest in the Boulder County portion of the district.
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Greg Lindstrom
)

For southwest Weld County voters, the nearest of those vote centers will include: the Dacono City Hall, 512 Cherry St.; the Erie Community Center, 450 Powers St.; Frederick's Tri-Town Baptist Church, 420 Johnson St.; the Carbon Valley Recreation Center, 701 Fifth St., Frederick; the Southwest Weld County Service Center in the Del Camino area east of Longmont, 4209 Weld County Road 241/2; Mead Middle School, 620 Welker Ave.; and the Plattteville Town Hall, 400 Grand Ave.

Weld's other vote center locations can be found online, by visiting co.weld.co.us and clicking the links for the Weld County Clerk and Recorder's election information. Or, people can call 720-652-4200, extension 3070.

Polling-place and mail-ballot drop-off locations also are available on a voter information website maintained by the Secretary of State's Office, GoVoteColorado.com.

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